ROCHESTER — The day before winter break, Spaulding High School junior Ashley Mooney asked some of her peers for help with a project very close to her heart — creating white paper snowflakes for students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Just one week after the shootings at the school, located just a few hours away from the Lilac City, residents in Newtown held funerals for those lost as some Connecticut students in the district returned for class. Six adults and 20 young children were fatally shot in their classrooms after a gunman entered the school’s halls on Friday, Dec. 14.

Officials there say at this time, it will be months until the Sandy Hook site is reopened for school, if ever again. In mid-January, Sandy Hook students will resume their teachings at a school previously closed in the nearby town Monroe.

Mooney learned from her father, Michael, a member of the national Parent Teachers Association, the Sandy Hook Parent Teacher and Student Association (PTSA) is requesting people mail in hundreds of white paper snowflakes as they hope to make the new school a “winter wonderland” for survivors.

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Allen/Democrat photo
Ashley Mooney, 17, cuts snowflakes at Spaulding High School, which she will send to the survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, Conn.

“They want to cover the walls, the ceilings, the lockers…,” Mooney said. “When (students) come back, (the PTSA) wants to make a warm, nice environment … When I saw that I said, ‘That’s something easy. That’s not hard at all.’”

Mooney, 17, is a manager of the girl’s basketball team and a member of the National Honor Society (NHS). She said she is planning on using both her connections in the athletics department and NHS to raise funds for Sandy Hook. In the new year, she plans to set up coin drives at local games for people to donate their change, and hopes to schedule some benefit nights as well.

“I think if we could raise $500, that would be amazing,” Mooney said.

Spaulding High students had been feeling the effects of the Sandy Hook tragedy all week, with rumors circulating someone would bring a gun to school and police officers stationed at the entrance while the district opted to lock every one of the facility’s exterior doors. Rochester police confirmed those threats were dispelled and Superintendent Michael Hopkins said the claims were generated through a “Facebook hoax” on the popular social networking website.

Mooney said she saw her classmates sporting white and green earlier in the week, to honor the fallen Newtown, Conn., elementary students by wearing their school colors.

On Friday, Mooney sat with NHS adviser Lauren Despins in the art room, cutting white paper while gently pulling back the folds and taping them to create different intricate patterns.

“I thought it was pretty fantastic that she wanted to take such a lead in a project like this,” Despins said when asked about Mooney’s project. “…When she said she wanted to do this, (I thought), ‘That’s pretty incredible.’”

Mooney said earlier in the week, she and her classmates discussed the Sandy Hook shooting in various classes, and she said the talks helped everyone express their feelings. She hopes the snowflakes will provide some comfort for the young survivors in Connecticut, as well as communicate to those outside of Rochester her fellow students are willing to give back.

“When I saw this I thought this is something we can do to help other people, because they’ve helped us,” she said.

Mooney added the school shooting was something that hit close to home for her.

“It’s so close to us. It’s just Connecticut,” she said. “It’s a town like us (where) you don’t expect it to happen … They’re so little and innocent. What did they do?”